The closed system is just fancy words for "you don't really own your phone, we do". Doesn't help a tiny bit against the devices getting pwned, if you'll excuse the pun.

Why did you think that?

He didn't.

Because that's how Apple publicly justifies the closed ecosystem. You and I are savvy enough to know that it's hogwash, but you would be surprised by how many people, including technologists, buy that marketing.

Probably because Apple has invested a lot of money in their "Privacy: That's iPhone" advertising campaign, and used the closed nature of the iOS ecosystem to defend their position in the highly popularized Epic Games v. Apple trial.

you forgot the /s

The closed ecosystem prevents this exploit from ending up on the public App Store and infecting devices en mass...

Umm if it's zero click why would it need to get on the App Store ? And what does getting something on App Store have to do with the system being open or closed ?

What makes you feel that malicious apps are the only vector for these exploits. The web is open and iOS users can still download files on their devices. Let's disable file downloads altogether and limit people to an alternative "reviewed" web.

Please don't use the flimsiest of excuses to bootstrap an argument for a more restrictive world.

The App Store is not the delivery mechanism for this attack, so no.

I think the argument is that having a completely open App Store would increase the attack surface, since the average user will click any install icon.

I think the greater argument to be made is that it doesn't matter, since iOS has had no-click zero-days for longer than it's had an App Store.

You realize store evaluation is just a PR and is mainly used as a control tool.

I mean, how could something like this happen if there was any real security?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/XcodeGhost